Saint John entrepreneur sets sights on space field

When entrepreneur Qinhong (Tammy) Cai isn’t learning how to run an revolutionary enterprise, she’s producing a prototype to trap carbon from the air and change it to a purer form of natural fuel she hopes to one particular day sell to the space industry.

The founder of the Saint John-primarily based startup Gaia Refinery explained her structure will use microorganisms, identified as biocatalysts, to develop a chemical response that produces organic fuel, these kinds of as methane.

“I am really fascinated in carrying out this whole challenge that I have conjured in my thoughts and I imagine about it working day and night,” she stated. “I’m so passionate about it. Gaia is my little one.”

Suitable now, Cai is one of six startups taking element in Energia Ventures, a a few-thirty day period accelerator system for corporations in various fields, ranging from power and clear tech to cybersecurity and synthetic intelligence, at the College of New Brunswick.

Cai stated the present-day small business model for carbon seize know-how is not economically viable still, mainly because eliminating carbon from the air can expense anyplace from $100 to $800 for every ton.

But the previous Purely natural Sciences and Engineering Study Council of Canada (NSERC) submit-doctoral fellow, with 14 many years of working experience investigating microbial CO2 conversion, is hunting to enhance on the technological know-how by constructing what she phone calls “direct air” carbon capture methods. They don’t depend on high-priced and energy-intensive supporters and heaters to get the task finished.

Saint John is an suitable site for her “baby” mainly because the superior winds make it extra feasible to run the carbon capture devices.

“We can channel that wind and build a reservoir to stability the wind so that we do not need an abnormal electrical power provide to run supporters,” she mentioned, introducing her passive capture design and style will retail outlet the transformed organic fuel in tanks.

Cai examined environmental biology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, graduating in 2009. With a enthusiasm for the all-natural environment, she sought to escape the megacity in China for a put exactly where she said she could dwell nearer to nature. Canada was the perfect location to pursue her environmentalist ambitions.

She was acknowledged to Memorial University of Newfoundland to review…